Description
The January 2025 ban on Tiktok in the United States catalysed a digital migration to Xiahongshou(RedNote), spawning self-identified ‘TikTok refugees’ What followed (albeit for a short while) was a significant moment of digital upheaval and sanity checks, which gave glimpses of critical meaning-making across the diaspora. Identity within a digital community is based on a subscription to a view of oneself and/or the other corresponding to deeply held shared beliefs.Often, this view in social media apps is sustained/manipulated by re-interpretation of symbols, ideas and messaging construed as propaganda(Robertson,2022) to engage users in specific ways and encourage the adoption of the collective mindset. The socialisation function of these echo chambers propped by the algorithmic foundations often creates a comforting and familiar reality and (perhaps) slowly attempts to alienate other avenues of critical thought. Yet, every so often, social media also creates the opportunity for such reality to be challenged. The digital migration of “TikTok Refugees” provides a glimpse of how TikTok users in America and RedNote users in China went through a social experiment of disruption of beliefs, meanings and assumptions of self and the other.
This case study aims to understand how alienation, created by popular culture moments such as these, gives rise to sites of challenging power. Through some examples of initial interactions, digital adaptations and creating conversations and connections, we aim to discuss how this phenomenon provided an opportunity to reflect on the power of digital communities in providing educational encounters- understood as transformative experiences that change users' relationship with digital spaces and culture, revealing how this digital displacement can potentially serve as critical meaning-making.
| Period | 22 Mar 2025 |
|---|---|
| Event title | SOCIAL SCIENCES IN THE 21ST CENTURY: A DIALOGIC MODE OF UNDERSTANDING HUMAN EXPERIENCES |
| Event type | Conference |
| Location | Dehradun, IndiaShow on map |